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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

It happened again today - I got an anonymous comment from a parent annoyed at me for a post I wrote a year ago criticizing Baby Gap for marketing "skinny jeans" for toddlers. (Again with the anonymous comment. What is with that?) Apparently that post hit a nerve. I have gotten tons of comments and email from the humorless parents of thin children.

What these parents have failed to notice is that my complaint is NOT that jeans or other clothes are made for slimmer kids. Perhaps I was too subtle in my letter; my point might not have been entirely clear. Let me restate:

The problem is not the narrowness of the pant legs, but the marketing of sexy styles for TODDLERS.

Somehow, the people who know me (even those I have only "met" via our respective blogs) understood that I was horrified by the idea that adult styles are being marketed for such young children. Andy, who has a thin girl, commented that she needs the style but is nauseated by the name. This seems reasonable, given the way skinny jeans for adults are marketed - as sexy and body-baring. If the adult skinny jeans were marketed as good for thin people who have a hard time fitting into other pants, then I would have no beef with the label being used for kids' pants. As it is, the issue is about a style marketed as sexy for adults, and seeing that being sold for children.

If you have stumbled here by googling "skinny jeans for toddlers", I'm sorry if my post offends you and your bony baby. Feel free to buy whatever you want. Better yet, get your own blog and write posts about annoying mothers who foolishly don't want clothing companies marketing sexy toddler clothes. Bitching at me kind of misses the point.

9 comments:

I was going to post on "mumus for fat kids" but when I remembered the beating you took over this disturbing infant-Lolita thing the Gap has, I stopped. Plus the insensitivity thing, that was a problem. Maybe I will do an expose on plumbers jeans by Wrangler, or something like that.

I can't believe people would misunderstand that - maybe they're Gap black ops people? I do find myself (since dudelette arrived) looking at young girls dressed up as Christine Aguilera or something (and I don't mean as a Mouseketeer) with a much more visceral sense of horror these days.

I just read my comment back. Why is it that it's impossible to write "young girls" in pretty much any context without sounding like a total creep?

Okay, umm...not sure how skinny jeans are "sexy" per se. I'd be more concerned about body image and the fact that my little toddler would start believing that she has to be "skinny". That's the bigger issue. by the way, I can't stand mommyblogs, especially this one, but somehow i stumbled on it via urbanmamas.

Thanks darlin! Guess it doesn't seem like such a leap to me from marketing something as sexy to over-emphasizing skinny. Last time I looked mainstream media tended to fetishize skinny as sexy.

And hey, thanks for taking the time to point out that you hate my blog and tell me how you got here. Your distaste for mommy blogs must be why you spent 30 minutes here, and left by clicking over to Mom 101. (psst, that's a Mommy Blog too!)

nonlinear girl,so you tracked how long i was on your site and where i went afterwards, eh? actually that is the very reason why i hate mommy blogs. because you ONLY care about traffic. it's stupid. I quit so called "mommyblogging" about 3 yrs ago and it was the most freeing experience. actually, there is life after blogging! after 3 yrs, i decided to see if all the old bloggers were still around, and yep, they still are. it's like an addiction if you ask me (well, i know you didn't).